Destiny Developer Bungie Cuts 220 Staff: ‘Some of the Most Difficult Changes We’ve Ever Had to Make as a Studio’ [IGN]

The cuts affect every level of the company, including most of the Sony-owned studio’s executive and senior leader roles, Bungie boss Pete Parsons said in a post on Bungie.net. “Today is a difficult and painful day,” Parsons added.

Departing staff will be offered “a generous exit package” that includes severance, bonus, and health coverage, Bungie promised.

Parsons blamed the cuts on the rising costs of development, “industry shifts,” and “enduring economic conditions.” Because of this, Parsons insistsed, Bungie has had to make “substantial changes” to its cost structure and focus development efforts entirely on live service looter shooter Destiny and the upcoming Marathon.

The cuts come after what was seen as the successful launch of Destiny 2 expansion The Final Shape. Parsons acknowledged this in his post, but said they were necessary “to refocus our studio and our business with more realistic goals and viable financials.” Parsons also said the cuts were made “after exhausting all other mitigation options,” although he failed to say what those options were.

The 220 layoffs come alongside the integration of an additional 155 roles, or 12% of Bungie’s workforce, into parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment over the next few quarters. Parsons said this move saves “a great deal of talent that would otherwise have been affected by the reduction in force.”

That suggests that if Sony hadn’t taken on these 155 roles, 375 staff would have lost their jobs today, and that the actual reduction in Bungie’s workforce over time will be substantially more than 17%.

Meanwhile, Bungie is working with PlayStation Studios to spin out one of its incubation projects, an action game set in a brand-new sci-fi universe, to form a new studio under the PlayStation banner “to continue its promising development.” Parsons did not say how many staff will leave Bungie to form this studio, but did admit “this will be a time of tremendous change for our studio.”

Based on the information provided by Parsons, the total size of Bungie pre-layoffs was roughly 1300, so the number of staff leaving to join this new PlayStation developer is somewhere around 75. This also means the actual percentage of people leaving Bungie proper as a result of this restructuring is around 34%.

Parsons went on to explain how Bungie got to this point, confirming that the studio had been “running in the red” after its financial safety margins were exceeded following delays to both The Final Shape and Marathon and a rapid expansion that “stretched our talent too thin.”

Over 850 staff remain at Bungie building Destiny and Marathon, Parsons said.

Here’s the statement in full:

This morning, I’m sharing with all of you some of the most difficult changes we’ve ever had to make as a studio. Due to rising costs of development and industry shifts as well as enduring economic conditions, it has become clear that we need to make substantial changes to our cost structure and focus development efforts entirely on Destiny and Marathon. 

That means beginning today, 220 of our roles will be eliminated, representing roughly 17% of our studio’s workforce.  

These actions will affect every level of the company, including most of our executive and senior leader roles.   

Today is a difficult and painful day, especially for our departing colleagues, all of which have made important and valuable contributions to Bungie. Our goal is to support them with the utmost care and respect. For everyone affected by this job reduction, we will be offering a generous exit package, including severance, bonus and health coverage.

I realize all of this is hard news, especially following the success we have seen with The Final Shape. But as we’ve navigated the broader economic realities over the last year, and after exhausting all other mitigation options, this has become a necessary decision to refocus our studio and our business with more realistic goals and viable financials.

We are committing to two other major changes today that we believe will support our focus, leverage Sony’s strengths, and create new opportunities for Bungie talent.

First, we are deepening our integration with Sony Interactive Entertainment, working to integrate 155 of our roles, roughly 12%, into SIE over the next few quarters. SIE has worked tirelessly with us to identify roles for as many of our people as possible, enabling us together to save a great deal of talent that would otherwise have been affected by the reduction in force.   

Second, we are working with PlayStation Studios leadership to spin out one of our incubation projects – an action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe – to form a new studio within PlayStation Studios to continue its promising development.  

This will be a time of tremendous change for our studio.

Let’s unpack how we ended up in this position; it’s important to understand how we got here. 

For over five years, it has been our goal to ship games in three enduring, global franchises. To realize that ambition, we set up several incubation projects, each seeded with senior development leaders from our existing teams. We eventually realized that this model stretched our talent too thin, too quickly.  It also forced our studio support structures to scale to a larger level than we could realistically support, given our two primary products in development – Destiny and Marathon. 

Additionally, in 2023, our rapid expansion ran headlong into a broad economic slowdown, a sharp downturn in the games industry, our quality miss with Destiny 2: Lightfall, and the need to give both The Final Shape and Marathon the time needed to ensure both projects deliver at the quality our players expect and deserve. We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red.

After this new trajectory became clear, we knew we had to change our course and speed, and we did everything we could to avoid today’s outcome. Even with exhaustive efforts undertaken across our leadership and product teams to resolve our financial challenges, these steps were simply not enough.  

As a result, today we must say goodbye to incredible talent, colleagues, and friends.

This will be a challenging time at Bungie, and we’ll need to help our team navigate these changes in the weeks and months ahead. This will be a hard week, and we know that our team will need time to process, to ask questions, and to absorb this news. Today, and over the next several weeks, we will host team meetings and town halls, team breakout sessions, and private, individual sessions to ensure we are keeping our communication open and transparent. 

Bungie will continue to make great games. We still have over 850 team members building Destiny and Marathon, and we will continue to build amazing experiences that exceed our players’ expectations.   

There will be a time to talk about our goals and projects, but today is not that day. Today, our focus is on supporting our people.

In March, multiple sources told IGN that Bungie was in the midst of shifting around its creative leadership on Marathon, including removing long-time Bungie designer Christopher Barrett from the game director role. IGN learned he was being replaced by former Valorant game director Joe Ziegler, who left Riot Games for Bungie in 2022.

At the time, IGN was told that Bungie was pouring resources into getting Marathon out the door. The game’s direction had shifted somewhat under Ziegler’s new leadership, one source said, including moving away from custom player characters in favor of a selectable cast of heroes.

There were also internal fears and rumors that layoffs would immediately follow the release of The Final Shape, with one source saying “nothing adds up” and “something will need to happen to curb costs unless The Final Shape does so well to cover the gap and people can move to Marathon.”

Unfortunately, those fears have now been realized.

Bungie has found itself rocked by a number of major shake-ups in recent years that have tanked morale at the studio and left its future uncertain. Sony officially acquired the studio mid-2022, with the promise it would largely retain a semblance of freedom as an independent subsidiary. Sources told IGN that’s largely remained true, but Bungie has struggled to meet key financial targets, with Destiny 2 significantly underperforming last year.

In October, Bungie laid off roughly 100 of its then-1,200 employees amid greater cost-cutting measures that saw Marathon delayed to 2025 and employee benefits slashed, further damaging the mood internally.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.